CURACAO: 1:30-10:30pm

Well, we had a bit of time before docking in Curacao today and I was glad to "sleep in" somewhat. That usually doesn't happen on a cruise and especially after we had stayed up so long the night before.

I woke up at 9am and feeling a little tired still. I mean I still only got around 6 hours of sleep and today was going to be a big day for us....DIVING!!

Trixie and Cookie were hiding in the bathroom in the tissue box area...

Around 9:30am we headed to the buffet area for breakfast. At this point, I decided I was tired of the runny eggs and it was omelet time for the remainder of the cruise if possible. I never really seen the omelet lines too long, which was a nice change from experiences on the other ships.

We hung out on the deck for a while and noticed the pool was "temporarily closed". Well, this lasted the rest of the day. So who pooped in the pool????

We watched Lorelei (I'm not sure if she was the assistant cruise director or what but she was involved in every event and everywhere on the ship) conduct the Zumba class and they had everyone up on the decks participating as well. 

We met up with Kendra after she got probably around 13 hours of sleep since yesterday and Sakari and Kambriah was begging to go swimming. We decided to let them go up to the water park (but the slides were closed for some reason). 

I decided that I was going to vegetate until it was time to get off the ship because I needed to gather my strength for diving today. Run along little ones, I'll watch you from right here.

Eventually, we headed up to tell the kids they needed to get dried off and get ready to go ashore once we docked. 

I noticed Brayden had joined in on the fun at this point. 

At 12:30pm, we were back in the room and the kids were changing clothes and getting ready for an exciting day in Curacao.

We are going diving today with Bas Harts Diving. How we came to this conclusion will be in my Curacao review.

Immediately it was time for Kam to go to school. We crossed our fingers and our toes that she would go and dropped her off...without a problem! Wow, this was going smoother than we had ever hoped for. At that point, Brayden was pulling a "I don't want to go scuba diving and want to go to the kids club today" and I put my foot down because he had privileges to sign himself out of the kids club (which he managed to do instantly after his mom was out of site every time). I told Kendra under no circumstances would he be allowed to stay on the ship without her being there and running wild. No way! When I ask him about why he wasn't' wanting to go diving (when he had done so well every other dive and enjoys it) he said because of his sunburn and he didn't want to put on a wet suit. I told him they would not MAKE him wear one and it was up to him. He felt better after that and agreed to go...not that I was giving him a choice, but it made it a lot easier on us.

We pulled in and docked a little after 1pm. They had told us (on deck 1 and close to our room) that it could take up to 1/2 hour for them to clear and open that area HOWEVER, if we wanted to go to the front of the ship, we were able to get off right now and off we went.

Boy was it windy out! Just like Aruba is every day!

To read our awesome review of our experience diving, click the following link:

We were back to the port and to the ship around 6:30pm. We headed to our rooms to take a quick shower and change. We were hungry and needed lunch/dinner. We decided to go to the buffet for a quick bite to eat because we wanted to get back off the ship and explore the city since we never had the opportunity the last time we were here.

The kids said they didn't want to go with us and elected to go to the kids club. At this time, the kids club was at the buffet for dinner and that would be where I dropped Sakari and B off at. Kam was already there and smiled and waved and I must have stood there with my mouth open in shock. I didn't get a "Where's my mom" "I wanna leave" or crying or anything. Just a smile and wave. Meanwhile, Kendra was in the background hidden because she said that it looked like Kam was having a good time and she didn't want to have to take her in to town if she didn't have to. She watched as we were standing there and seen that Kam didn't ask us to leave and Kendra was over joyed that she would have a few hours off the ship without the kids and fighting or crying. It was going to be adult time!!!

After we scarfed down our food we headed off the ship....for a night of exploring and lots of picture taking!

Then off the ship we went for a kidless and fancy-free night on the town exploring. 

Curacao REALLY decorates for Christmas...I mean REALLY REALLY decorates! You'll see what I mean with all the pictures and I'm not even sharing them all.

It was just so pretty there!

We came to a place that looked like a fort and they called it the Renaissance Wall & RIF fort. But it was like a little shopping mall and restaurant area.

Some random people that wanted to be in everyone's pictures because they were sitting where people sit to take pictures and not moving.

This little scuba dive person was so cool. I really should have bought it. I just didn't know where I would put it.

This is where we were heading. I had read in the past that there was a swinging/moving bridge and I just knew this had to be it. 

It was lit up with so many different colors and it randomly changed colors too. I tried and tried to get a good picture (even tried to record it) and I was unsuccessful it capturing what I was really seeing. 😞

These things are so cool! You bring a lock and put something on it and lock it on the heart. I have only seen them in shows on t.v. before and never in person. Had I know they had one, I would have brought a lock for us. Next time...!!!

I think vendors could make a lot of money off this if they were to have a booth beside this and sold only locks. I looked everywhere and found nothing. Maybe I should move there and sell locks to those people passing by looking for a place to buy one.

I really couldn't believe just how much they all go out for Christmas. Sakari would have loved all this. She likes doing/seeing things like this. I was sad that she missed it and decided to stay back on the ship.

Santa sits in the middle of the street

We walked all over that little town and my feet and legs were starting to hurt. We kinda went "off the path" for a while and got turned around. But all we had to do was look for the bridge and lights.

Back to the fort and I knew we were getting closer.

Deers gone wild...

We had finally made it back to the port area. It was time for a little bit of shopping.

After we finished shopping, it was time to head back on the ship.

Kendra went running when she saw the towel animal. We asked about how long they would be out there (with the intentions of getting on the ship and grabbing the munchkins and bringing them back out for a pic) but they said they would be leaving within a few minutes. Darn!

We were back on the ship by 8:45pm and checked in with the kids. Sakari was in the room drawing on her phone

She said she really didn't want to go out or do anything (I'm not sure why all of a sudden hanging out in the room is more fun than doing activities on the ship) and we decided to head out for a show.

It was back to getting up early in the morning for a "normal" day in Aruba. We headed back to the room and watched a little English t.v with Spanish commercials and headed to bed after seeing our rabbit towel animal for the night.